Once You Were Beautiful
by Vast And Tiny Mind
Summary: The sign of a beautiful person is that he always sees the beauty in others. -Omar Suleiman. In which the god of mischief has won. Torture and implied rape. If it bothers you, don't read.
1. Chapter 1

The knife. It is burrowed between two of her ribs. There is another one stuck in her right shoulder. She can't feel that arm.

This was bound to happen. She has been expecting it for months. Or maybe it is a year now. She isn't sure, Loki's reign has driven her into a cave. Literally. She still remembers the day that he took over. The panic...

* * *

_"All units, abandon base! The director is down. I repeat, abandon base!"_

_Deputy Director Hill's voice echoed throughout SHIELD's New York base. Shots were fired near the door. Agents were screaming. She couldn't find Barton._

_"Tasha!" She heard a hiss near the ceiling. Looking up she spied his face through the vent bars. "I'm going to get Hill. She's trapped in Fury's office. You go." He urged._

_Natasha nodded and pulled a glock from her thigh, shooting the largest window._

_"Nat!" His voice found her ears again, more tender than before. She looked up, there was sorrow in his eyes. "Be careful."_

_She smirked at him, trying to hide her fear. "Always. And Clint?" Her expression turned nostalgic. "I've always been compromised, I never grew up."_

_"Little Midgardians!" A voice boomed through the smoke. "You are at a hopeless disadvantage. Lower your weapons now and you will be redeemed. Fight and you will die."_

_With one last farewell glance to Clint, Natasha fired a grappling hook and line through the window and to the ceiling of the quinjet garage, swinging down and releasing her hold just in time to swing into the closing back door of the last fleeing quinjet._

_"Romanoff!" Someone yelped in surprise. When she looked up she found Bruce and Steve crouched near the pit. It looked like Tony was piloting. Pepper was in the co-pilot seat._

_"Hello boys." She greeted with a saucy grin. "Leaving the party so soon?"_

_"Where's Barton?" Bruce demanded. "You wouldn't leave him there, would you?"_

_Natasha's smile faded as she remembered her heroic companion._

_"He went back to get Hill." She informed them. "Don't worry, he can make it out." Her reassurance sounded more like a terrified plea._

* * *

He hadn't made it out. He'd been taken down trying to breathe life back into Maria's body. That's what Natasha has been told, at least. The pain had been suffocating, but it has numbed and she is glad that she knows (at least that's what she thinks every day).

_Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie._ She has told herself, although she is not sure it is true.

Another knife is thrust into her left hand, pulled out, and pushed into her thigh.

"You are pathetic." The pretender whispers in her ear. "You are a feeble, crying _child_ who knows no more about pain than the merest insect. You are a disgrace to your family and to your world. Worthless."

She can handle this. The insults, the tears at all of her self doubts. She has heard them many times before, and had been sure that she would hear them again.

Her right arm is lifted and she cannot help the shriek that escapes as an arrow is stabbed through it, nailing her hand to the wall behind her.

"Look at you." The silver tongue seethes. "Cannot even stand this. You are a weak, whimpering girl who cannot even hold herself up, who struggles to lift her head. Look how frail you are. Do you see who you thought you were? I don't. Look how_ insignificant_ you are."

It is this last sentence that has her gasping for air. Her other arm has been nailed up also, but she cannot feel it for the knife in her shoulder. While the word-twister feeds her verbal maladies there is another man who is cutting her cells apart.

_Insignificant._ She repeats in her head._ Insignificant. Worthless. Weak_.

He doesn't react to her at all. He lifts one of her limbs, impales her with another arrow and goes on.

_Insignificant. Worthless. Weak._

"You couldn't even save those who mattered most to you. Who believed in you. Who spent weeks in cells hoping and praying that you would come for them."

_Lies_. She thinks. _Lies, lies, lies_. But she is not sure of anything anymore.

"Your precious Captain America, and that unpleasant Iron Man. He didn't even beg for his life. He wanted me to save Pepper Potts." Here the lie-spinner laughs to himself.

She groans out two words. She sounds like death.

"Come again, my love?" He asks.

"Pepper," She gasps. "Did you save her?" Another shriek -she sounds more like a screaming banshee than a dying assassin- because another arrow has been shoved into her ribcage.

Another chuckle. "I forced him to watch her die and made sure he believed it was his fault."

He is silent for a moment, then raises his hand to signify Clint to stop piercing her with arrows.

"Do you see how insignificant you are to him?" He purrs into her ear. Clint stares at the two -shining god and bleeding mortal- with cold indifference. He is clutching an arrow in his palm and his other hand is fidgeting.

"Do you see how much he wants to hurt you? How impassive he is to your worthless pain?"

The trickster tears the arrows from her hands, releasing her from the wall, and pulls her battered body into his lap. She tries to hide her face, but he grabs her chin roughly and forces her to stare into Clint's electric blue eyes.

"I own you!" Loki snarls. "I control everything you do, everything that happens to you, and your precious _savior_ doesn't even care."

"Clint," she tries, her voice is raspy and hoarse. "Please, Clint."

He just goes on staring at her. Staring and staring and staring.

"Leave us." The monster commands, and Clint obeys.

_Insignificant. Worthless. Weak._

"How does it feel to have to yield to he who you tried to conquer?" Loki growls. Without hesitation he picks up her slack body and throws her onto the ground. He wrenches the various knives and arrows from her torso and limbs, then starts to undress himself.

"No." She gasps, her entire body is shuddering in pain.

Her clothes have been torn beyond repair many hours ago, in one swipe he has removed the tatters that remain.

"I own you." He repeats, lowering himself on top of her. "You can do nothing to stop this."

She is thankful when the darkness finally starts to swarm her vision.


	2. Chapter 2

She finds that once she gets over the violation of her body and the extreme torture that he ordered, Loki isn't so bad. She had humiliated him while he was in a cage, and so he had her punished for it. Now she has control over seven servants in the house and -although she is still a prisoner- they treat her like she is a lady.

She has been in this fortress for a week. The mind-invader himself hasn't approached her since she was brought here, but she sees Clint almost every hour. She has come to the conclusion that he is assigned to watch over her, and she wastes no time in taking advantage of the situation. By the fifth time that he has made his round on the seventh day Natasha is knocking him over the head and pulling him into a nearby supply closet.

When he wakes up three minutes later his eyes flicker briefly and he fixates on her face.

"Tasha," he says. "Tasha." But then the poisonous blue is back and he is fighting her, using her previous injuries against her.

She tries to fight him again but it is harder now than it was on the helicarrier because her entire body aches. With a kick to her healing ribs he is twisting her arm behind her back, aggravating her shoulder wound at the same time. A good amount of blood dripping from her barely-healed injuries is steadily spreading throughout her shirt and some filters through the fabric to splash on the tile. Maybe the Clint she knew really is gone.

* * *

Loki is not pleased when he storms through the door to her bedroom to find her on her knees, blood staining the floor and Clint standing at the ready behind her. He stalks up to her broken body and slaps her across the cheek.

"_This _is how you repay me?" He screams. "I have shown you the greatest clemency! I have kept you with nourishment for body and sustenance for mind, and you repay me with _this!"_

"You claim mercy and yet you run through life as a madman." She says lowly. "What have you given me besides imprisonment?"

"You wonder?" He exclaims in disbelief. "When all of you petty mortals claim that you treasure free will above all else! I have kept your mind apart from the whole. I have shown you respect by giving you the freedom to make your own choices. I have not forced my mind, my decisions, on you, and by that I have granted you the most wonderful blessing." Here he stops and touches her cheek briefly, drawing his finger down the bone and to the corner of her lips. "You say I have imprisoned you, my love."

She chuckles darkly, because he truly believes himself. "You may not have meant to, but I am as much a prisoner as he-" Here she jerks her head to indicate the archer's stolen body. "It is only a matter of time before I bow to you as everyone else."

Loki pulls his hand away from her in favor of running it through his greasy hair and stands to pace. "I would never imprison your mind." He says, nearly tender.

"Am I to believe that?" She asks, wincing as a twinge of pain shoots through her shoulder.

"I always keep my word." The dark look on his face is enough to warn her of oncoming mishap, but her tired mind has lost its caution, and she finds that she is too weary to care.

* * *

Time has passed -of that she is certain- yet she has almost no idea how many days she has lost. Her open wounds are all healed, yet her left arm barely moves, and it is hard enough trying to close her fingers in a fist without the nightmares that are constantly plaguing her mind. She hasn't seen Clint since she tried to free him, but the god of lies is frequently watching her from the other side of the glass. He had her put in a glass cell, similar to that on the helicarrier (which is undoubtedly a show of the power he has gained over her since their last formal meeting) and everyone that passes by can see all that she does. It is so infuriating to have so little physical privacy that she often finds herself retreating into her own mind, where conditions are hardly better.

Her only triumph is that it maddens the trickster to have no control over her thoughts. It has been more than once that he comes up to the wall and asks to be told what she is thinking of, then be extremely disappointed when he receives no real answer.

* * *

It angers Loki mightily when she refuses to give more than two or three words in return. It angers him more that he should be so infatuated with the mind of a _mortal, _but all of his anger will not stop him from trying to crack her facade.

"You will talk to me eventually." He says one such time, walking away slowly.

"Is that what you know?" She says lowly, following up with a saddened chuckle.

It is most obviously not meant for his ears, yet he is so surprised by her bereft response that he cannot help but react.

"Do you not long for real exchanges between another intellectual being? Do you not mourn the days in which you could sit and converse with someone who has something worthwhile to contribute?" He pauses to breathe and when she does not answer he continues.

"I can see it in your eyes, _Natasha_, you crave intellectual contact. It is not something you can easily go without for so long. Sooner or later you will embrace my attempts to engage you in discussion, you will not fight."

"Never!" She spits out angrily. "I will never embrace you!" She puts her back to him and quite plainly marches to the other side of the cell.

_Suit yourself. _He thinks, walking away, as he is almost to the exit of the room he hears a quiet mutter that makes him turn back.

"You've compromised yourself."

He is about to yell at her for ever insinuating that he would put himself in such a situation when she explodes.

"He's worth it, goddammit Romanoff! He's worth it! Damn you!" He watches the broken woman yell at herself as she collapses in a heap of tears.

"Damn you." She whispers again. "He's worth it."

Somehow it is unfitting to watch her weep, as if he has not been longing for her to crumble since he met the wailing mortal. He cannot help but think; _her life in the balance and still nothing is more important than one man._

* * *

There are two other cells besides Natasha's in the 'Cavern'-as she has come to call the great room- all are the size of a small bedroom and all are made completely of glass. She has taken to wondering who else the ambitious god would prefer to keep as a zoo animal than to kill or to tame. So far the only people she can think of are already dead. Stark, _maybe, he would probably get too annoying. _Thor, _as a boast._ Pepper, _nope, she's dead._ Maria_,_ _Clint couldn't save her in time. _Bruce, _if only because the Hulk cannot be killed. _Fury, _dead._

Much more time has passed since her last breakdown-66 meals, 112 naps, 44 visits from Loki, eight sightings of Clint- before Natasha sees another familiar face. She will not deny that horror has never before struck her this deep; because she thought that the Deputy Director of SHIELD had been saved from this madness. Oh, yes, the horror fills her body and adds kindling to the dying fire of rage as Hill -bruised, bleeding, and limping a great deal- is pushed through the entrance to the Cavern and toward one of the empty glass cells. Loki is trailing behind the procession of blue-eyed minions, the horned crown atop his head.

"No!"

Natasha forces her tired body to stand and turns to follow Maria with her eyes. Loki raises his arms as Hill is stopped in front of the cell and the glass disappears, leaving only a ring of blue light behind.

"No!" Natasha screams again, banging her right fist on the translucent wall of her cage. "No! Kill her instead! Not this! No!"

Hill is pushed to the center of the ring and Loki lowers his hands, returning the glass and entrapping the woman inside. Without the rough support of the guards she falls to the ground, her hands go out to catch her and something snaps as she lands.

"No!" Natasha's fist has started to bleed, her nails are broken and her throat is raw. "No!"

Loki glances at her smugly on his way to the exit, he doesn't say anything but the smile on his face is accomplished and she wonders who else he plans to break.

After Loki has paraded out of the Cavern Natasha turns her gaze to the other agent of SHIELD, crumpled on the floor of her glass prison.

"Maria." She says softly, yet firmly. When the woman doesn't answer she tries a more direct approach.

"Hill!" She barks as loud as she can. Maria groans and curls her knees to her chest. "Give me a sit-rep, Hill. Tell me what's hurt."

After almost a full minute Maria sucks in a large breath and exhales, whimpering quietly. Natasha has never seen such a strong woman break into so many pieces, but then she realizes that she is just the same, both are shattered like glass.

"Who are you?" Hill asks lowly, her voice muffled by the floor.

Natasha's breath whooshes out of her in disappointment and she leans against the glass wall, sliding down until she is sitting on the floor.

She almost answers "I'm Natasha Romanoff. Agent of SHIELD." But she isn't, SHIELD has been torn down and Nat is no more an agent than she is a child. Both are things of the past.

"Natalia Romanova." She settles for this name, as it was the name she used when she had no hope and the only certainty she had for the future was pain. It fits this situation as well.

"Natalia..." Maria groans out. Natasha waits for the tired woman to continue, inspecting the cracked nails, swollen knuckles and aching bones of her right hand. She hears Hill suck in another rattling breath and sneaks a glance at the third cage, wondering who else would be imprisoned.

"Help me." The other woman pleas quietly. "Natalia, help me."


End file.
